Volvo Safety Seat with Rattle & Mum (Giveaway closed)

As the partner of CarseatFullstop, the carseat awareness campaign, Volvo is helping to reduce the chance of children being seriously injured in road accidents. Their range of highly rated – and tested – car seats is also part of the Volvo safety credo. This week they’re giving away one fantastic seat here, in a size of your choice (you can choose from three).

The Volvo safety seats have been developed with Britax, who are the original developers of car seats. Britax are rated as the safest seats in the world, which is great news if you’re wanting the safest of the safe.

The range, protecting newborn infants to children around 10 years of age, includes an exclusively rear-facing child seat that can be used up to 25kg (between four and six years old). According to extensvie research, rear-facing child seats are five times safer than forward-facing seats.

What is Volvo’s reason for advocating rear-facing seats until age six?

Research says that a child’s neck is weak and it is still developing and the head is proportionately larger than that of an adult. When travelling rearward facing, incoming collision forces are spread across the back and head. This reduces the load on the neck in a frontal impact, which is the most common and often the most dangerous type of collision.

All seats have been crash tested by Volvo in actual cars (other seats are tested in simulators). I obviously haven’t tested this claim, as this would mean crashing my car and using kids or dummies! But you can find out more about their years of research and their tests from Volvo directly.

I can tell you that the infant seat, which I’ll be using in a few weeks’ time, is easy to carry (not too bulky and heavy) and simple to assemble. I’m practising the in/out manoevre in order to prevent tears later on. (Mostly from me, I imagine, if I can’t buckle/install the seat properly).

It’s good to know that the seats are free from specified allergy-forming substances. All covers are removable and can withstand the 40 degree cycle in the washing machine.